An email specfic discussion group that includes Your Humble Blogger chose as this autumn’s books the Chrestomanci novels of Diana Wynne Jones. I had read them, a year or two ago, and actually own them. Sadly, all my paperbacks are still in boxes, and may well be in boxes for another year or two. I could (possibly) have opened all the boxes and hunted through them for the thing, but I thought that instead I would just get the thing from the library. Well, and it turns out that my small-town library has—get this—no Diana Wynne Jones books at all. None. I mean, I know it’s a small-town library, but it has a pretty reasonable collection of YA books to browse through. I think (particularly after this summer’s movie) that her stuff is (a) popular enough and (2) similar enough to Harry Potter to be on any library’s shelves.
Half-an-hour’s drive away from this small town, though, is a large town, which has a larger and spiffier library. I visited that library last week and picked up The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume I. That’s the very same edition I own, which gave me the sense that I was rereading my own book, which was nice, but I shall have to remember to return the thing.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.